At some point while thinking about our approach to education we asked children 1 question: What would you like to find out from scientists?

What happened is we received thousands of absolutely amazing and unexpected questions about everything! (How you weigh the Earth? Why is the sky blue? Can people melt down all North Pole? Why do I have two holes in my nose? How many hair is there on lion’s head?…).  Big questions, funny questions, important questions, smart questions of 6-14 year olds. Looking through them, one of our reflections was the following: weren’t these questions – or at least some of them – our own questions at some point in our lives? And, how come after so many years of formal (and informal) education and experience (and all of us are 30+) we still don’t know the exact responses? And why?

What did we do at school? 😉

We had of course some responses in our heads (it was not THAT bad, you know), but we got to the point where adding some additional “but why’s” made us realise, that we just don’t get it really 🙂 – and also, that we CAN (and do) live with that. It left us wondering how at some point we just accepted the level of our lack of understanding and moved on skipping yet another “but why?”.

Who to ask though? How many “but why’s” of an average kid can an average person handle?:) Some of us are parents and – believe us – we know what we are talking about here: the constant inflow of ‘Why’s?”, ‘When’s?”, ‘How many’s?”, ‘Which’s?”, ‘For’s?” and  ‘How’s?”…

Because it is so, okay?” 🙂 We read somewhere that an average 4 year-old asks 437 questions a day. Scary?

We haven’t read anywhere though how many questions an average adult asks a day, yet we’re pretty sure it would probably be MUCH less than 437. Even scarier? Do grown ups already know the responses to questions they do not ask? (which was definitely not the case in our little experience with kids’ questions) – or is it that we just do not notice the “question-opportunity” anymore 🙂 – or not give ourselves time to wonder. Why is the sky blue?  Do you know? If not, what would it change for you if you knew? What would be different if you gave yourself some time to think about it?

And this is how we knew we would engage our actions in appreciating the ability to wonder why, or simply – the CURIOSITY – as one of the most important competences for life.

We’re WhyBlueSky
Check out our all open source LESSON PLANS that respond to REAL QUESTIONS of real children! 🙂